4 years should be adequate. Except for records showing any after-tax contributions, which should be held until 4 years after the the accounts are emptied. That might make the records permanent if you never drain your IRA/401k accounts.

3. non-tax deferred investment records

4 years after the investment is sold. If you give an investment to someone, give them the related purchase record.

I'd refine this a bit.

100% agreement on after-tax contributions.

vanilla taxable investment accounts. I'd keep the purchase confirmation until eveything bought had been divested. If selling the purchase confirmation goes with the sale confirmation, and its status changes to this year's taxes, to follow that retention schedule.

Investment accounts, whether retirement or taxable, yield incredible amounts of paper in the form of statements. They serve only one useful purpose IMO. You should check to make sure nothing hinky is going on. Having done that review, I'd pitch it. If you do this online you never have paper. If you're getting paper statments, you keep the current one only until you get the next one.

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